Earlier generations of medievalists staked their claims to relevance within the disciplines of history and literature by reading humanism — supposedly an invention of modernity — back into the Middle Ages, discovering premodern valorizations of the human person, of the self, of language and learning. But as the ideology of humanism has been subjected to increasing critique across the humanities and social sciences, medievalists, too, have shifted their attention. Critical theory of recent decades has freed us from a teleological model of historiography that had forced us into the self-defeating position of attempting to argue the significance of phenomena from the distant past within a paradigm that assigned value based on progression in time. And the body of theory that can be loosely grouped under the heading of “posthumanism” resonates with medieval texts. Whereas the thrust of humanism is always toward a disembodied subject who masters language, using it to express his (I use the gender advisedly) terror in contemplating the twin infinities of large and small, thinkers such as Cary Wolfe have demonstrated that the human animal is caught within two finitudes, the body and language. Rather than constituting that which sets the human apart from other animals, language should be understood (in the wake of Derrida) as a “radically ahuman technicity or mechanicity” (2010, 88). In any moment of semiotic communication, humans and nonhumans share this subjection to the two finitudes. Hence the significant role that critical animal studies have played in the elaboration of posthumanist thought. The three luminous books discussed here have all allowed posthumanist theory’s emphases on the body, on language, on the constitution of the human in relation to other animals or other kinds of matter, to shape rich, rewarding readings of medieval texts.

中文翻译：

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前现代后人类

早期的中世纪主义者通过将人本主义（据称是现代性的发明）读回到中世纪，发现了人，自我，语言和学习的前现代价值，从而在历史和文学学科中主张了相关性。但是，随着人文主义意识形态在人文科学和社会科学领域受到越来越多的批评，中世纪主义者也转移了他们的注意力。近几十年来的批判理论使我们摆脱了史学的目的论模型，这种模型迫使我们进入一种自欺欺人的位置，试图在一种根据时间进程分配价值的范式中争论远古现象的重要性。可以粗略地归为“后人类主义”标题的理论体系与中世纪的文本产生了共鸣。尽管人本主义的主旨总是朝着掌握语言的无形的主体前进，但用它来表达他（我建议使用性别）的恐怖，以考虑大大小小的双胞胎，但卡里·沃尔夫（Cary Wolfe）等思想家却证明了人类的动物在身体和语言两方面受到限制。语言（而不是构成使人类与其他动物区分开来的语言）应该（在德里达之后）理解为“具有极端非人性的技术性或机械性”（2010，第88页）。在符号学交流的任何时刻，人类和非人类都将这种服从于两种局限性。因此，重要的动物研究在后人类思想的阐述中发挥了重要作用。这里讨论的三本夜光书都使后人文主义理论对身体，语言，与其他动物或其他物质有关的人类构成的重视，可以塑造出丰富而有益的中世纪文字读物。